The Clone's Mother (15 page)

“I thought you were telling me I should tell Carl about the baby. I’ve worked hard to keep my promise to Jackie.”

“How do you work with him, knowing what a schmuck he really is?”

“He has a disease. The booze made him different. It’s under control now. You’ve got to try to understand. I’ve loved them all…Jack, Zoe, and even Carl. But my first priority is my sister, and I’d do anything for her. She’s been through so much. When she needs me, I help. It’s that simple.”

“She’s lucky to have you.”

“It’s the other way around.”

I knew he was underestimating himself, but he wasn’t taking any arguments on the subject.

I realized what a jerk I’d been to think so little of him when in fact he’d been so unselfish and loving the whole time.

It was a new thing for me, but I knew I had to do it.

“I’m sorry,” I said, having trouble raising my eyes to meet his. “I was—wrong to think what I did. Please. Forgive me?”

Was that so bad? It didn’t even hurt. Much. Now all I needed was a
you’re forgiven
and everything would be okay.

After he took a deep breath, he reached over and took my hand that was trying to rub a hole through the ceramic on the side of the cup. “Kate,” he said, “I don’t blame you. You’ve been through a lot.”

I wondered if that meant he forgave me. But if he didn’t blame me in the first place, did that mean there was nothing to forgive?

He let go of my hand and rose from his chair, giving me the cue that we were finished talking for the time. I guess I was forgiven. Or at least not blamed.

“I’m looking forward to taking you to the hospital dinner,” he said out of the blue.

“Me too.” Great conversationalist, I am. I was still trying to figure out if I’d been pardoned or just exonerated.

He opened the kitchen door to let me go out first. Jackie was sitting in the middle of the living room, staring at the kitchen door. The baby lay on the couch, drinking her formula from a bottle propped on a pillow. Jackie watched me with an unreadable gaze as I crossed the room to the front door. The music Mack had turned on was off.

“Bye,” I said as I picked up my bag with the gown. “Nice to meet you.” I wasn’t sure how to take her.

She stared at me.

Mack stepped outside long enough to give me a quick kiss and say he’d see me later.

I took me and my new dress home, having lost the thrill I’d enjoyed when I first headed toward Mack’s. When I got home, I didn’t even show Ollie the gown. I was depressed. Ollie wanted to know what had happened, but I couldn’t answer. It was all too embarrassing anyway. I couldn’t believe I’d thought Jackie was Mack’s girlfriend. Or that he’d kidnapped babies. Or that he didn’t blame me.

Chapter 26

Rent was due and I’d already spent my quarter collection on laundry. And I really didn’t want to sell Curious George. I owed him an apology for even considering it, which I was fully ready to offer him now that I’d practiced asking for forgiveness from Mack. But with rent needed, and selling Curious George off the bargaining table, I had to get my job back. I didn’t know why I’d been sacked, but I had my suspicions Carl was behind it.

First thing next morning, I got on the horn to Schroeder’s office. I’d awoken mad and nasty. I was ready to play rough, tired of being pushed around by people who thought they were more important than everyone else.

Plus, I was the safe distance of a few miles of fiber optics and several telephone poles away from him.

Nazi put me on hold for the longest time before Carl finally came on. It gave me enough time to gather my courage—or at least abandon all reason and judgment.

“Schroeder.”

“This is Kate Johnston.”

“Hello, Ms. Johnston.”

“I want my job back.”

“You have me at a disadvantage here, Kate. I didn’t know you’d lost it, or anything about it.”

“Yeah, right. Don’t give me that. I didn’t do what you wanted, and then I got suspended. You know you threatened to fire me.”

“If I remember correctly, when the question arose of your probation, we were discussing the matter of disciplining Ms. Langley inappropriately. It had nothing to do with anything else.”

“You know and I know the truth of it. Couch it all you want in protocol mumbo-jumbo, but you canned me because you didn’t get Trent. And I’m thinking someone else might want to know more about your clinic patients, certain precious DNA, car accidents, alcoholism, and yes, oh yes, cloning.”

There was no sound from the other side.

“You have nothing to say?” I asked.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. But I’ll see what I can do.” He hung up.

Well, wasn’t I something? Got him shaking in his boots.

Or else he got off the line so he could put out a contract on my life.

Either way, it would take care of my employment dilemma.

My heart was pounding, my throat was tight and dry, and my heartburn was heating up. I popped a Tums. I looked down at Ollie and said, “I can’t believe I just did that.”

He couldn’t believe it either. He hoped it wouldn’t interfere with his consistency. Then he went off to bathe in a puddle of warm sunshine streaming in on my hardwood bedroom floor.

In less than an hour, I got a phone call from the hospital. The head of nursing said she had been trying to get me for a few days. They’d looked into the allegations against me and were able to clear my name.

I asked, “Just what were those allegations anyway? No one has ever told me.”

“If you’d like to request a copy of the report, you may fill out a requisi—”

“No! I wouldn’t like to request a copy of the report. I want to know now what this was all about. Unless you prefer to have my lawyer look into unfair labor practices or violation of employee’s rights or—

“Now listen here, Kathleen. None of that will be necessary. All right. I will tell you the gist of the complaint. A report was filed alleging that certain controlled substances were improperly handled by you. It’s a very serious accusation and we couldn’t take it lightly.”

“But you could have
told
me about it. I could have told you from the start it was ridiculous. Who filed the report?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“You won’t let me face my accuser?” I asked sardonically. “My lawyer—”

“That’s not what I mean. It was reported anonymously.”

“You’re telling me I’ve been suspended because some stranger—who could have been anyone—suggested I was stealing drugs?”

“We had to take something like that seriously. We would have been remiss to ignore it.”

“But any moron could have called up—it could have been the paper boy miffed for not getting a big enough plate of Christmas cookies,” I snapped out. (She didn’t need to know that I didn’t have a paper boy.)

“It was nothing like that. It was someone who knew the details of your unit. She knew too much for this to be your paper boy.”

“She?”

“We’ve tracked all the drugs and tested the stock for dilutions or substitutions and none were found altered, so it appears it was all a hoax. Please accept my apologies on behalf of everyone here. I’ll see to it you get the lost wages from the days you missed in the next paycheck.”

Accept her apologies? There it was again. Forgiveness. It was supposed to be freeing. So I guess I could forgive her. It
would
be easier. Especially since my lawyer was on a fishing trip far away, and I needed the money.

“When should I come in?”

“You can start back tonight at seven.”

“I’ll need to be off Saturday. For the hospital’s anniversary dinner.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

I put the phone down and wondered if I’d just been real stupid to let all that go. It sounded like maybe Carl wasn’t behind it after all. The suspension, anyway. He might very well have had something to do with me receiving the call to come back.

I didn’t want to think about Carl helping me out. It didn’t fit my perception of him—lady-beater, drunk, illegal-cloner. It was easier to just assume he was all schmuck.

So I didn’t think about him. I put my mind on other things. I remembered my doctor’s office call. I needed to give them a call back.

It took all morning to get through, and when I did, their answering service picked up, telling me in a recorded voice that they were out for lunch till one.

Their office returned my call when I was asleep, napping to get ready for my twelve-hour shift. Ollie had apparently refused to answer the phone when it rang, so we did another round of phone tag. By the time I awoke and found their message, it was after hours and time for me to get ready to go to work.

The prospect of reappearing at work was daunting. Who knew what rumors had circulated during my absence to explain my sudden disappearance?

I didn’t have to wonder long. Sheila was on duty.

I encountered her at the front desk as she was looking at the assignment chart.

“Well, look who’s here,” she said in a loud taunt. “It’s our very own pusher. Lock up the Demerol. Kate’s back.”

Miss Clairol thought she was so clever.

“So nice of you to miss me, Sheila. So you’ve been letting your natural color grow out while I’ve been gone.”

She looked confused.

“Roots, Sheila. Roots. All those roots are showing below the blond. Don’t you ever get tired of having more fun and want to go back to down-to-earth brown?”

She threw her nose into the air and stormed off. Guess she’d meant to continue playing at platinum for a time yet.

Charge Sarge welcomed me back with a bone crunching hug. Sandi was on and she whispered as she passed me that she knew I hadn’t done anything wrong.

The night went smoothly enough, as did the rest of the week. It passed quickly. By day I slept, waking in time to fix Ollie a gourmet meal of Happy Cat and myself some eggs or cereal. My appetite was still a little off, but I could stomach most things. By about three a.m. every morning I got a touch of nausea, but that wasn’t unusual, with the fatigue that comes with messing with one’s internal clock the way we graveyard-shifters do.

Friday afternoon I finally connected with my doctor. She called after her last patient and I was already up.

“Kate, I’ve got some test results for you.”

“Hi. Yeah, I’ve been trying to connect with you. Go ahead. I’m all ears.”

“Your potassium is low, not dangerous by any means. But you might increase your potassium-rich foods—you know, bananas, melons, avocados, spinach. And your hematocrit was down too. You’ll need to start on vitamins. But more on that later. Most important of all was your hCG. It was positive.”

I swallowed hard. This was not good news. Not good at all. “I’ve got a tumor?”

“You know what hCG is?”

“Yeah. If you’ve got it, it means one of two things. It can’t mean the first for me, so it has to be some hCG-secreting tumor. Do you think it’s malignant?”

“No Kate, you’re pregnant. That’s all it means.”

“It can’t mean that. I know I’m not. We better do an MRI or something.”

“I know this might not be what you expected, but it’s not cancer. It might be hard to let sink in right now. I understand.”

“Listen, Dr. Chen. I know for a fact I can’t be pregnant.”

“Contraception isn’t full-proof, Kate.”

“I don’t use contraception. Because I haven’t had sex. I’ve had a couple of nice goodnight kisses, maybe a hand thinking of roaming a little, but believe me, if there had been any chance of a Mr. Sperm even
thinking
of coming my way, he got thwarted long before he ever got anywhere near blastoff.”

“Okay, Kate. Calm down.”

“It’s a mistake. Believe me. Vials get mixed up, labels mismarked. I
know
I’m not pregnant.”

“All right. It’s true. The lab isn’t infallible. Since you’re so certain, I’ll write orders to rerun the tests. Can you come in on Monday?”

“Sure. That big Eskimo guy in the draw room didn’t do much to win my confidence.”

“He’s no longer in the lab. We encountered a few problems.”

“See?” I said with certitude.

“Okay. We’ll redo the electrolytes and CBC too. Just in case those weren’t accurate either.”

“Thanks. And you’re probably right about the bananas either way. I’ll have one for dinner.”

“See you here Monday.”

I laughed nervously as I replaced the receiver. “Ollie, you won’t believe what happened.”

I told him a brief summary of the mix-up. He yawned and stretched and didn’t even laugh. He’s never had much confidence in organized medicine, even though that’s what puts his food on the table. So little respect.

I got through the shift pretty well. It didn’t start for me till eleven, so the eight hours seemed like a breeze after so many twelves. It seemed the incident of my suspension was put aside by everyone. Sheila wasn’t on this weekend, so I didn’t have to deal with her snide remarks or her condescending glares again. She seemed to have relished the thought of me doing something illegal and getting caught. I couldn’t help but think that she might have had something to do with the trumped-up charges. I had never thought she’d go that far before, but now I had to wonder. Not that I could do anything about it, but it would be wise to be wary of her.

By Saturday afternoon, I was up and getting ready for the ball. No happy mice or singing birds showed up to help me dress, but Ollie was standing by, overseeing the process. As I struggled to get my unruly hair to curl, I told Ollie that I was afraid Mack might want to
come upstairs
tonight after the ball. I wasn’t sure what I would do. I didn’t want to make him mad, but I needed him to understand that I might need more time. Maybe he could just come up
part of the way
and we kiss some and cuddle. I told Ollie we might need some privacy if that was the case. Ollie told me to cut out the cheap talk, that I shouldn’t get myself in a compromising situation and risk trouble.

This coming from the cat who slept with every female feline he could woo and seduce before I got him neutered.

Once I got my hair curled and styled like a photo in an issue of
Glamour
, I took a minute to inspect the results in the mirror over my credenza. Hot diggity. I could have been on
Bachelorette
. The stringy tresses that ordinarily pestered me all day by falling in my face had metamorphosed with only ninety minutes and a half jug of gel into gentle, soft curls around my head. Make-up smoothed away most of my freckles and helped to accentuate my eyes, which once again became magically green under the power of the lustrous forest-black fabric of my gown.

The gown. Wow. I hadn’t noticed how much the top boosted my breasts up and out. They seemed bigger somehow. The bodice was like a tight corset. A gorgeous, emerald-encased tight corset. Mack might think I was a hussy, showing all that skin.

But I had to admit, it made me feel sexy. I think I might have had one up on Cinderella. Even her glow-in-the-dark bustier wasn’t quite as cool as
this
.

Just as I twisted to try and see the back of the gown and the full skirt cascading to the floor, the buzzer at my door rang.

My stomach flopped. It was time. Without even speaking, I rang him in.

After a few seconds of deep-breathing to calm my thumping heart, I swung open the door. The most handsome man in the world came up the stairs onto the landing in front of me.

He took my breath away. His tanned face, the loose curls on his brow, and his chiseled—yes, I actually said chiseled—jaw could land him on the cover of
People’s
most-handsome-can’t-breathe-you’re-so-gorgeous-Man-of-the-Year cover in a heartbeat. I didn’t know a tux could look so fantastic! He was stunning. His broad shoulders filled out the coat to perfection, and his narrow waist and long legs made my stomach do a hand stand and my heart thump out of rhythm.